(light up, light up)
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: "You don't have to pretend around me, you know." "I'm not." (one of these things is a lie)


Written for the Last Ship Sailing Competition: (dialogue) "I'm not pretending", (quote) "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad."- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and (color) peach, as well as the OTP Prompt List Challenge: (word) cruelty.

Title is from 'Run' by Snow Patrol.

 _Word count:_ 897

 **(light up, light up)**

London was quiet tonight. It was quiet on most nights, these days. Regulus hadn't thought the boisterous noises of muggle nightlife could be something he would ever miss, but life had proven him wrong.

Their Lord, and the actions they had taken following him, had proven him wrong.

"You don't have to pretend around me, you know," Barty said suddenly. His voice ruptured the silence so sharply Regulus almost drew his wand on him, tense before he let himself unwind cautiously.

"I'm not pretending," he replied evenly. He felt like laughing—like crying. Why was it that, of everyone in his life, _Barty_ had to be the one to notice?

 _Barty_ , who may be his partner but wasn't family, wasn't _blood_ , wasn't the one thing he had been taught should run thickest of all.

 _(maybe in another world they could have been_ something _; but in this one they're too busy trying to survive a war to do more than sneak around in dark alleys, mouths quick and dirty on each other as their fingers dig into soft flesh, because there is no time for kindness, not now, and maybe not ever)_

"No, of course not," Barty drawled back. He looked so pale like this, standing under a failing streetlight. The yellowish light made him look ghostly, like an apparition from another time—a specter, maybe; something that had already stepped into another world and never quite managed to properly come back.

It made Regulus yearn something fierce, passion burning low in his stomach. _Let me join you_ , he wanted to say—no, to yell at this pale apparition. _Let us be together in whatever way we can, in whatever way you'll let me_.

Barty stepped closer, but somehow he didn't seem to get anymore real, even when his fingers ghosted against Regulus' skin. He could feel the warmth and the pressure as Barty's fingertips grazed his face, and Barty's eyes were pools of inky darkness Regulus wanted to get lost in, but still Barty didn't look quite real.

"I'm not pretending," Regulus repeated, though he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be pretending about anymore. His breath had grown short, and it felt like his heart was beating so strongly—so loudly—that Barty had to be hearing it too. For it to be otherwise seemed inconceivable.

Barty was standing so close to him now that their breaths mingled. For an odd second, Regulus wondered how they looked to an outsider: would they only see one being? Or would they see two? It almost seemed like he and Barty had blended together, and Regulus was having trouble figuring out where he ended and where Barty started.

The decision to take a step back seemed impossibly hard, when faced with Barty's entire focus, and yet somehow Regulus managed.

He took a step back, blinked, and the moment shattered. For a moment, it even seemed that something shattered in Barty too, his eyes bright and sharp as glass shards before something else covered it up, smoothing the edges away.

It made Regulus want to say 'sorry', though he couldn't say what he was sorry for. He opened his mouth anyway, but the words stuck at the back of his throat.

"I," he started, and then something moved in the house they were supposed to be watching so Regulus straightened up, trying to erase the growing awkwardness of this situation. "They're moving," he said, and watched with fond awe as Barty's entire demeanor changed.

It seemed like the worst kind of cruelty, that Barty would look more alive than he ever did as he readied himself to attack another being—as he prepared to kill. But there was something predatory about him, something wild, and that something always made Regulus' heart beat faster by sheer proximity to it.

Merlin, how he hated this. But they didn't have a choice—but the Dark Lord had ordered this, had said 'I need that family dead', and so that family would die.

They put on their masks, and suddenly they were two nameless strangers in the night.

 _(and suddenly, they were the monsters mothers warned their children about)_

The family—muggles, though even that didn't bring the same peace of mind as it once had—died quickly. That wasn't a relief.

They stopped on a rooftop on the other side of town. It was almost funny though, how from above the houses looked exactly the same. The sun was starting to rise, its rays diffused through grey fog giving the sky a soft peach color. It seemed to pretty for their eyes, too kind after the atrocities they had just committed.

And yet, the sun still rose.

"I was pretending," Regulus found himself admitting. He wasn't sure why, but he felt like he needed to share this with someone, or the pain would carve a hole in his stomach and drive him mad. "I _am_ pretending."

For a long moment, Barty said nothing. He smiled, though, and Merlin, Regulus had never seen anything so sad.

"Sometimes," Barty finally said, his voice so soft Regulus almost thought he'd imagined it, "sometimes I pretend too."

They stood there, in silence, watching the sun rise, until the city started to wake. And then they left.

There would be, Regulus knew with heartbreaking certainty, many more mornings just like this one.


End file.
